It’s that time again. For those of us who work in regulatory roles within our companies, we know what annual telecom regulatory compliance reporting season means. It’s time to say “good-bye” to extracurricular activities and focus on the task of filing the hundreds of annual reports required by the FCC and state agencies (there are over 1600 reports filed over the course of a year for a nationwide CLEC).
It seems, at times, that the entire company gets involved in the activity. IT is involved in continuous data crunching, support staff tries to pick up the slack regarding the day-to-day issues that you cannot attend to, and you race the halls putting out potential fires. Others have learned to just stay out of the way if their department is not part of the chaos that is annual reporting season.
For those of us who provide outsource compliance reporting services to the telecom industry, it is game time. Time to rely on the skills we have honed, test our stamina, and provide calm in the eye of the storm for our clients. Report formats, data requirements, collection percentages, and billing systems have changed over the last twelve (12) months. At Technologies Management, Inc. we monitor every state and the FCC continuously on behalf of our clients. We have identified and implemented more than 13,000 changes to those various reports we have all come to know and love.
Unlike the off-the-shelf tools we can use for the filing of our personal income taxes (also hitting at about the same time as annual reporting season) there are no such tools available for telecom service providers to assist them in filing their annual regulatory reports. If you are doing this for your company, on your own, you and your co-workers have had to invent your own system to accomplish this. Perhaps you have critical report dates in your Outlook calendar, filing cabinets filled with five years of data, and you have developed a special form of communications with your accounts payable department to get checks cut on a timely basis. And maybe you have created a method of collecting updates from the FCC and the applicable states and cobbled together a kind of process to get the job done. Sound familiar?
This time of year is tough because you know that just one event can have a disastrous impact on your company’s annual compliance reporting effort as a whole. A corrupted data file, a personal emergency, an errant decimal point can impact the filing of reports that has an extremely tight timeframe and can implode your system. If you are shouldering the burden alone or sharing it with a small staff, you know it is up to you to get this monumental task accomplished - - until next year. After you regroup and take a mental health day, you and your team probably set aside the time to review how you can do this more smoothly. You and your company may decide to consider an outsource solution to your compliance reporting ordeal.
Partnering with an outsource company for your regulatory compliance reporting is a big step. The time to seriously contemplate making that change is now, while the outcome of annual reporting season is still a major concern. Here at Technologies Management, Inc., we have developed an unrivaled system to collect data and file reports for every type of telecom voice provider (VoIP, Wireless, WISP, CLEC and Cable telecom provider). We ease the reporting process for over 200 companies. A few key items to look for when considering using an outsource firm are:
- An easy to implement automated reporting process
- An established compliance reporting team that has developed the proactive relationships needed with FCC and state staff members.
- Convenient online access to all your reports for ease of retrieving important copies whenever you need them. All reports filed should be visible at any time by your team for full transparency.
- A 90 day calendar to accurately alert you and look ahead for mandatory filings and any related financial requirements.
- A treasury management function that facilitates getting payments to the right agency and provides monthly statements to you for your accounting purposes.
And most importantly . . .
- You must have an interactive relationship with the personnel dedicated to you and your company. A team with the in-depth knowledge and experience to handle the specialized requirements of your business.
So while annual reporting season continues to roll forward, think about how nice it would be to focus on growing revenue and expanding markets while letting someone else worry about filing your required reports and all that entails.
If we can help, please let us know. Otherwise, good luck and we will see you on the other side of Annual Telecom Regulatory Compliance Reporting Season.
